Everyone, regardless of their cultural origins, shares a broad range of cross-cultural experiences when living and working in a new culture. Candidates for international positions should do an intercultural training to ascertain if a life and career overseas is the right thing for them.
If you wander down the right back alley, you can still find the surviving remnants of a functioning Italian city -- a playground, a tailor, a basketball court, an upholsterer, a yoga class, a pet shop, a funeral parlor.
One of the joys and the fears of travel (not the kind that is safe and monitered so you never have to deal, but real travel) is that existential moment of just throwing yourself out onto the world.